Nonconsecutive Gratitude - Gary V.

I tried to write a poem the other day at work. I say tried to write. I wrote some. It was a sentimental enterprise about a feeling I was having. It was a carving in a tree along a path that I feared I may never travel again. I was thinking a lot about the form of it. I even Googled iambic pentameter to make sure that I was remembering it correctly. For years I’ve had this notion of writing what appears to be prose, but is unceremoniously a sonnet. This thing I wrote on the buck-slip that had been in my pocket was not that. It was just a few lines, a cobbled-together overarching metaphor, and some slant rhymes. It left me fairly spent of the feeling that had inspired it. And it left me with that old feeling that poetry is a dead art form. So why am I writing this about that? As a place holder. I watched a YouTube video the other day. It’s a show with hot questions and even hotter chicken wings. I love the show, but I wasn’t sure that I had ever heard of the guest, Gary V-something-or-nother. I normally skip episodes that don’t include people that I’m already pretty familiar with. But not this time for some reason. And this guy was pure inspiration. All energy. Positive mojo oozing from simmering dynamite. I was blown away by him. And at the end of the most amazing appearance I’ve ever seen on the show, he was given the customary opportunity to plug a current project. He didn’t. He took the moment to look the audience in the eye and say, “suffocate your [baloney] excuses and go do something. Forget about what I’m doing. Go do something. It’s time." Mind blown. Half a tear in one eye. Inspiration. How grateful should we be for those who inspire us? I’m so thankful for that show having Gary V. on the show. I’m so psyched that he keeps it real and doesn’t let people off the hook for how they phone-in their lives. Thank you for the motivation. Thank you for the incitement to get up and get going. Thank you for riling the inner drive to create. So this is what I’m doing. I write. I aspire to write. My ideal self is a writer. Maybe I’ve misapprehended this fact. Maybe I’m more of a talker who hasn’t realized his opportunity. But I talk way too much junk off the top of my head to be a professional. At least with writing I can proofread for dumb mistakes and untenable philosophical positions. Having started and stopped a million new things, I claim this thing to be nothing but this one thing. I would love to look back on this as a turning point where I stopped being a passive-voice consumer of culture and became a force in my own right. But this is at least a tree carving that will be here the next time I come this way.